21 SEPTEMBER 2009
Decided to take a break from the real production and work on some of the blank areas of the site. I started to fill in the History section. Not quite sure I like the layout but it's better then the nothing I had before. History.


19 SEPTEMBER 2009
Spent the afternoon rendering out the fur-ed teddy bear for the picture to right(assuming it's still there). This isn't the final fur or alien texture but I still felt like it was missing from the character. Also started splining shot 13. Decided to skip over 12 for now since it's a bit more complex. cookie_shot_13_anim_v8


16 SEPTEMBER 2009
Had a few issues with the new ik/chest mode setup and went back to fix them yesterday. Wasn't too bad, just annoying. Since I'm usually tired after work, I don't want to start splining shot 12 until I feel fully awake or motivated. Didn't want to lose too much momentum though so I began blocking shot 13 yesterday and added some breakdowns today. I actually really liked my original 2001 layout poses and tried to keep the essence of them, even though they were done in Project:Messiah. Eight years later I'm finally getting to the animation. cookie_shot_13_anim_v6


14 SEPTEMBER 2009
Almost 10 years after I started this project and I'm still tweaking the rigs. After blocking shot 12, even though I used fk, I decided I might want some more flexible ik controls.Generally I prefer to animate with fk whenever possible, but sometimes you really need to lock things down with ik. Not sure how I will spline this shot, but I wanted some options so I rigged up some constraints for my default ik controls to either be global or local to the chest as well as have both arms constrained to one object which can in turn be either global or linked to the chest. Luckily it was non-destructive to my previous shots. Should give ultimate flexiblity and I don't mind ik/chest mode so much.

This also forced me to start working on the IMAGES section of this site. I may change that to "media" at some point, but for now it will do. Definitely can be quicker to pose as you can see here: ik vs fk mode


12 SEPTEMBER 2009
Started blocking shot 12 this morning then watched Notre Dame lose to Michigan on pretty much the last play of the game : ( A real bummer but I forced myself to keep blocking afterwards. Still have to do the Robot and see if I like what I've done with the Alien, but at least it's something. I think one reason I stalled out over the past few months is thinking how difficult this shot could be with all of the parent switching. I suppose I could have done some of the easier shots, however, I like going in order right now. cookie_shot_12_anim_v10